By Mark Woolsey

Non-profit Family Promise of Cobb County is wrapping up its 10th year of service and plans to significantly expand its offerings in 2025.

The non-profit was founded in New York in the 1980s and later spread nationwide. Its goal was to provide accommodations for families with young children, unlike many shelter operations that separate family members during a stay.

Vetted families spend one week each staying with 14 different churches in Cobb, which provide housing and shelter. While in the program, families also get counseling and help from caseworkers seeking to place them in a home or apartment. Families can also be placed in one of three transitional residences. Families must also have a car and work toward saving money.

The agency has helped nearly 200 families in Cobb and has hundreds of individual volunteers in place.

As for the future, “growth is our mission right now,” says Abbey Rudd, spokeswoman for Family Promise. “We are looking to help more families in more ways.”

To that end, says Executive Director Autumn Sines, several initiatives are moving forward.

“We are working to finalize our eviction prevention program,” she says, “working with families on the cusp of eviction.”

She says case workers will negotiate with landlords and tenants to firm up an alternative to evictions, will provide budgeting and other help and also call on other family members to provide aid.

Sines says they’re also introducing a shelter diversion program, where clients and families coming to them could be aided in moving directly to arranged housing without being accepted into the shelter program. Landlord-tenant mediation, housing location and rent and utility help are additional components.

Sines says they would also like to add what she called a “food cohort” for families that they have served.

“A lot of the families when they are here in Cobb County don’t have families or a group of people that they can do life with,” said Sines.

She said that, under the program, they would provide fresh fruit and vegetables. Families would come in, pick up the produce, and stay for dinner, talking and developing a community of common interests and mutual support.

Grief and trauma programs for children and their parents and instruction in financial literacy and budgeting are also being developed.

“If we can save one family from being evicted or we can help a family go immediately into an apartment instead of a shelter that reduces the trauma on their children(that’s what they’ll do),” said Sines. She says they think such help keeps older children from becoming homeless as young adults as well as helping mitigate childhood trauma,

To bring finances into line, Family Promise officials say they’re in the process of writing several grants to support both new and existing programs. They are also planning additional fundraising events during the year, such as a pickleball tournament and a sandwich-making competition.

Rudd says the charity is funded in a variety of ways, including grants and sponsorships, donations from congregations and individual contributions.

Their 10th year this year, she says, was marked by a variety of marketing efforts that brought in more volunteers.